Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, Fugou Keiji has returned! It’s been a few months since we got our last dose of “billionaire solving problems with money”, I’m glad its back. So without further ado lets dive in and talk Japanese Batman!
First up though, a recap of what exactly Fugou Keiji is all about for those that have forgotten. The story centers around Daisuke Kanbe, a multi-billionaire with more money than god. In his quest to play detective he solves any and every problem with money. Need a car to chase a crook? Buy some random civilians car for 3x its worth and go. Need to bust into the penthouse of a building for some espionage? Just buy the building and shoot a rocket launcher at it since its now your property. Doing his best to rein Daisuke in is Haru Katou, a compassionate and former First Investigation Division detective, now relegated to grunt work. Together, with their mix of street smarts and raw monetary power, they will solve a myriad of crimes. And yes, Daisuke has his own AI Alfred. Caught up? Good, its time to talk new episode.
As far as the actual narrative goes, this wasn’t a bad way for Fugou Keiji to come back. It’s rather self-contained and focuses primarily on expanding Katou as a character. Revealing more of his backstory, paralleling the current events with what got him removed from the First Division, etc. As a whole it does a decent job of showing how he went from a rookie cop to the jaded but compassionate one we have now. It shows us, once again, how he cares more for saving peoples lives than he does keeping his job. Even in the flashback scenes we see him aim to disable rather than to kill, where the other officers don’t seem to have that same consideration. I do think it was a bit contrived for it to happen literally the moment he got off the train, Katou just fell into it. But thats a minor issue.
Beyond Katou, Fugou Keiji also seems to have something to say about medical costs and modern social media. I don’t think this is the core of the show of course, Psycho Pass this is not. But is still interesting to take a look at. Take for instance the “ChainTube” plot point. The money to be made from airing your life publicly, even to the determent of yourself and others. How people will tune in just to witness some horrible event, similar to how we plaster the faces of criminals all over the news. It’s all a bit ridiculous as an episode concept but Fugou Keiji is a ridiculous show. Meanwhile the actual issue’s its presenting are very real, if very dramatized, issues. Fugou Keiji is by no means a highly-political show, it’s a thriller comedy of all things. But that doesn’t mean it can’t take jabs at reality.
Sadly the question of “what kind of show is Fugou Keiji” is where I start to have issues. You see this episode has 2 main lines in it, the dramatic narrative line and the comedic one. The dramatic one is obvious, its Kato and the kid and the train. The comedic one however consists of the old ladies trying to get to a pop concert. This isn’t a bad idea in and of itself, it helps keep Fugou Keiji from getting to dark and gloomy, because then Daisuke’s ridiculous nature would stand out to much. However I found that in this case the tones were just to disparate and shoved together to roughly to really work. We cut from the kid threatening to murder people on live TV to him getting walked down by chanting grandma’s. From Katou considering shooting him to a pop-concert on the side of a building.
Don’t get me wrong, I love and even prefer it when Fugou Keiji is playing a joke. The show is at its best when its self-parodying the whole genre of “Genius Billionaire Super Hero”. It’s why the first episode, where Daisuke buys a car and then proceeds to ram his way through traffic paying off insurance companies, is my favorite. It takes the superpower of “Unlimited Money” to its natural ridiculous extreme. The whole thing is a lark, it’s never played straight or serious at all, with Daisuke even dropping his new “partner” off a bridge at the end. This episode still had some of that, but it was so out there and so ridiculous that when paired with a more “serious” story like Katou’s it just fails to mesh well.
All of my serious “criticism” out of the way, I did still enjoy the episode. I like Fugou Keiji’s concept, characters and soundtrack. At its core I think the show is a lot of fun. My favorite scene for instance was still the building-side pop-concert. It was so out of left field I couldn’t help but chuckle. And Katou’s bit of actually managing to save someone this time, albeit with Daisuke’s help, was sweet. Maybe it was undercut a bit by the fact that in the end the kid did get what he wanted, with Daisuke paying for his sisters hospital bills. But overall I enjoyed the episode and I enjoy the show. My criticism comes from a place of love for this jazzy, stylized show about a man and his billions of Yen wrecking Japan without a care in the world and I can’t wait for more.
